‘World’s worst team’ Bhutan aim to make history against Sri Lanka

Bhutan have won only four games in 33 years and once lost a match 20–0 – but the tiny Himalayan country now stand on the brink of an unimaginable success against Sri Lanka in the 2018 World Cup qualifers

Bhutanese football player Tshering Dorji, far left, celebrates after scoring the winner in the first leg against Sri Lanka. Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images

Thimphu is hard to reach and, as the world’s third-highest capital city at 2,648m, even tougher for the unacclimatised to play a potential 120 minutes of football in. But it is safe to say that Sri Lanka’s footballers were not expecting a task of the gravity they will face on Tuesday, when they must overturn a 1-0 deficit in Bhutan against a team that sit bottom – at 209 – of Fifa’s world rankings and are inevitable dubbed the world’s worst as a consequence.

Nobody gave the tiny Himalayan country a chance in their first-ever World Cup qualifier last Thursday but a late winner from Tshering Dorji gave them a hitherto-unthinkable lead that they feel optimistic of retaining in the rarefied air of Changlimithang Stadium.

“Everyone was talking about us being at the bottom but we didn’t feel any pressure because you can only go one way from there and that’s upwards,” the Bhutan captain, Karma Shedrup Tshering, tells the Guardian. “All the expectation was on Sri Lanka and they were talking a lot about beating us, but we kept our calm and let our football talk for us.”

The Fifa rankings are not always the most accurate barometer and teams can be blessed or cursed by playing a smaller number of games than others – with some strange-looking changes resulting. Tuesday’s match will only be Bhutan’s 60th official fixture since 1982, and the remarkable win in Colombo was only their fourth. They have not played a game in Thimphu since April 2003.

Such a record gives little scope for a leap in the other direction and what publicity Bhutan’s team have attracted owes entirely to their lowly position. In 2002 they participated in the ‘Other Final’ against Montserrat, winning 4-0 in a game arranged between the two lowest teams in the rankings (Montserrat were bottom) and marketed to provide an alternative to the World Cup final. Less positively, a then-world record 20-0 defeat in Kuwait received inevitable attention in 2000.

“Our coach, Chokey Nima, played in that game but most of our players were hardly old enough to walk or talk when it happened,” says Tshering. “None of us have watched it, so things like that don’t have a psychological effect on us.

“There is no need to worry about past results and the rankings didn’t really matter to us. We haven’t really played many games lately so to us it’s just a number – we’re more interested in focusing on the outcome.”

Bhutan, who played exceptionally in Colombo and mixed a diligent defensive attitude with some fast, attractive counter-attacking football, trained in Thailand for a month and the time spent together clearly paid off. Their performance was greeted with delight at home, a country whose first sport is archery.

“Nobody in Bhutan expected us to win,” he says. “We have been all over the news and it is a pretty historic moment. All the talk when we play international matches is always about how many we’re going to concede or just hoping to keep the scoreline low. But we didn’t concede and, even better, we won – so everyone was very surprised and shocked about it.

“Football had been developing at a very slow place here but you can see it picking up now. If we come through this tie it will be huge for the game here and it’ll keep improving. And for the players, they can really make football a profession with good results like this.”

Therein lies an issue that has held Bhutanese football back. Money is in short supply and football is far from becoming a professional sport: Tshering’s club side, Thimphu City, have finished runners-up in the lpast four domestic leagues but players are typically paid between $200 and $1,000 a year – by a club that, it should be said, makes no money – and Tshering himself receives nothing. He is the nephew of the club’s owner and has a fruitful career of his own, as a pilot for the national carrier Druk Air. It seems incredible that a role this demanding can be combined with international football captaincy but he explains that there is little choice.

“Life as a footballer in Bhutan is not much,” he explains. “You can’t make a living from the game. I work for an airline and they have been very understanding, allowing me to take leave and letting me change my flights when I need to. But many of the other players in our national team are young guys or 18 or 19 and still studying – some are at college and others are even still in high school.”

The hope is that success on an international level will raise the profile of the game enough for clubs to raise funds that can one day pay their players a living wage. Sri Lanka must be overcome first and Bhutan should still be considered underdogs against players who may be less shockable this time round.

“The job is only half done and we still have a game to go,” says Tshering. “We are trying to keep the players calm and reduce any pressure, which will be greater because we are playing at home and expecting huge support. There is going to be a lot of pressure on the players for this one – and especially for me as team captain.”

That support will fill the stadium to its capacity and all will be admitted for free. “There’ll be about 15,000 in there,” he says. Everyone will be wearing orange and yellow, our national colours. We don’t have vuvuzelas but we have traditional drums and trumpets and they will create a great atmosphere.

“It will be quite chilly, too, and hopefully that will help us. It’s also quite windy at the moment so hopefully I’ll win the toss and we can play with the wind – but let’s see how it goes.”

If all goes well then Bhutan, whose presence in a World Cup qualifying campaign is further evidence that a once-isolated country has designs on bolstering its presence internationally, will be pitched into a five-team group in the second round of the Asian section. It would be an unprecedented level of intensity for Tshering and company but would at least provide a regularity of competition that might show just how accurate those rankings really are.